Limerick legend Eamon Cregan has described the onset of “scrums” in hurling as obnoxious.

Cregan, who was inducted into the GAA’s Hall of Fame last week, laments the near extinction of ground hurling from the game nowadays and feels there is far too much emphasis on getting the ball into the hand.

“Ground hurling has a part to play,” he said. “It’s not the be-all and end-all of everything but there are times when you need to let the ball go on the ground.

“You know this hurling ‘scrum’ that I call it, I think it’s obnoxious. I hate it. There’s a ball there and everybody wants to go down and rise the ball and put it in their hand and burst their way out.

“All you have to do is just flick the ball into open space and the game goes on again. Was it Jimmy Denton that made the suggestion that instead of the ball being thrown in along the ground you throw it up in the air? Give it a go because this thing is terrible.

“Take the Fitzgibbon at the moment and you’re playing in bad conditions – you could have 10 or 12 scrums. That’s all I call them, scrums, and they’re not conducive to good hurling.”

Cregan, who is in charge of Mary Immaculate College who have reached the Fitzgibbon Cup quarter-finals, also worries about the high totals that are now being posted in hurling and takes it as an indication that the art of defending has declined.

“The idea of marking players seems to have gone out the window. That, to me, would be a basic format of any game of hurling, that you must be able to defend and must know where your players are.

“The speed of the game has increased enormously so therefore there is no space. We have lost some of the skills like ground hurling. Some of the best goals last year were scored off the ground and people were looking in awe at it but they were part and parcel of our game.

“Hooking, blocking... the batting seems to have gone out of it as well. To me, it’s tremendously exciting but the thing I worry about is the amount of points scored – 22, 23, 24, 25. That, to me, means there is somebody not doing their job.”

Cregan insists that sliotars are much lighter now than in his playing days and reducing their weight, he feels, may help.

“Centre-field play is practically gone out of it because the ball is going over their heads. A heavier sliotar? The game at the moment is exciting because of the speed of the ball but it is a remedy that could certainly help.

“When we played in the ‘73 Munster Championship we played with the McAuliffe sliotar, which had big, thick ridges. The moment Munster was over, we had to play with an O’Neill’s sliotar and we weren’t used to it so we had to practice with it.

“When we were practicing with it we couldn’t hit it 40 yards because it was a totally different ball. But it worked in our favour in the final because we got over that.”